“If you desire thoroughly to mortify and even to injure an opponent,” said an old swindler to me, “reproach him with the very defect or vice of which you feel conscious in yourself.–Fly into a rage … and reproach him!

“In the first place, that makes other people think that you do not possess that vice.

“In the second place, your wrath may even be sincere…. You may profit by the reproaches of your own conscience.

“If, for example, you are a renegade, reproach your adversary with having no convictions!

“If you yourself are a lackey in soul, say to him with reproof that he is a lackey … the lackey of civilisation, of Europe, of socialism!”